TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/50s/50korea

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                0.2.D.▀,          <                                          ╚The Korean War


  [In 1950, the war against Communism had many Asian
battlegrounds. China was lost, as was North Korea, and in
Indochina the French were barely managing to hold back the
Communist Viet Minh. Two hundred miles south in Malaya, the
British were engaged in a grim contest with homegrown
guerrillas; in the Philippines, Huk rebels pursued their drive
against the government. Things looked grim. Then in June heavy
fighting broke out in Korea.]

(July 3, 1950)

  It was 4 a.m. Sunday in Korea; it was still only 3 p.m.
Saturday in Washington. Just before a grey dawn came up over the
peninsula, North Korea's Communist army started to roll south.
Past terraced hills, green with newly transplanted rice, rumbled
tanks. In the rain-heavy sky roared an occasional fighter plane.
Then the heavy artillery started to boom.

  All along the 38th parallel--the boundary between North and
South Korea--the invaders met little resistance. In a
six-pronged drive the Communist troops swept south. One North
Korean force seized the isolated, virtually indefensible Ongjin
Peninsula in the northwest corner of the republic. Another,
spearheaded by tanks, drove down the Uijonbu Valley toward the
Southern capital of Seoul, which lies on the western side of the
peninsula, only about 40 miles south of the 38th parallel. A
full Northern division surrounded the central Korean railway
terminus of Chunchon, just south of the border.

  Still another drive headed down South Korea's east coast,
with the objective of joining forces with four amphibious groups
which had been landed behind South Korean lines.

  The Korean navy (consisting of small patrol craft) announced
hat it had sunk a Russian gunboat in Korean territorial waters.
A government spokesman claimed that some North Korean tanks
were manned by Russians, and it was reported that behind each
North Korean pilot sat a Russian observer to give aid & comfort.
No one was quite sure just how heavy a role Russian personnel
played in the North Korean army, but there could be no doubt
that Moscow's guiding hand was present.

  But the Communist mood of triumph was premature. Slowly, the
anxiously watching world saw sign after sign that there was
still plenty of fight in the South Koreans--and in the U.S.
First.

  The South Korean government had hopefully warned the
population not to be frightened by "strange looking" aircraft,
i.e., American planes. South Koreans anxiously waited for the
strange-looking planes to appear in the sky. For hours, hope
teetered in precarious balance with despair. Then came the
electrifying news from Washington: the Yanks were coming.


(July 3, 1950)

  The big question left for harry Truman to decide was not
whether to help, but how. As the tense White House conferences
stretched through Sunday night and Monday, that question merged
with another: Would the rapidly retreating South Koreans be able
to hold out long enough for the U.S. to act? By Tuesday both
questions were answered.

 "The attack upon Korea," said the President of the U.S., "makes
it plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond the
use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now
use armed invasion and war.": To meet this clear challenge, thus
clearly recognized, he ordered:

  1) U.S. air and sea forces to give the Korean government
troops "cover and support." Presumably this meant, as the Korean
government had been desperately telling its people, that U.S.
planes would bomb any South Korean city or military positions
held by the Communist invaders.

  2) The Navy's Seventh Fleet "to prevent any attack on
Formosa." Thus if the Korean invasion was a feint and a prelude
to a Chinese Communist attack on Formosa, the U.S. would be
there to block it. In exchange for this protection, Harry Truman
called on Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's government to cease
provocative bombardment of the Communist-held mainland.

  3) Immediate strengthening of U.S. forces in the Philippines,
and a speedup in military aid for the Philippine government.

  4) Faster delivery of arms to the French and anti-Communist
native forces in Indo-China, "and the dispatch of a military
mission to provide closer working relations with those forces."


  [It was the first full-scale war of the nuclear age, and no
one could be sure that one side or the other would not resort
to atomic weapons, particularly if the military situation looked
bad. Nevertheless, the non-Communist world rallied to South
Korea's defense.]

(July 10, 1950)

  No previous U.N. Security Council meeting, even those that
faced the crises over Iran and Palestine, had been so important.
North Korea had rejected the U.N. cease-fire order. For the
first time in its five faltering years, U.N. faced the issue of
taking up arms to repel an armed attack.

  With the calmness of a Vermont lawyer reading a brief before
a judge in chambers, [U.S. Ambassador Warren] Austin twanged:
"The armed invasion of the Republic of Korea continues. This is,
in fact, an attack on the United Nations itself." He urged that
"the Members of the United Nations furnish such assistance to
Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack
and to restore international peace and security to the area."

  After the council session resumed, Sir Benegal read the U.S.
resolution and added: "All those who are in favor, please raise
your right hand." When the hands went up they showed seven votes
(Britain, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Norway, U.S.) for;
Yugoslavia against; India and Egypt not voting. (Later India
voted for. The government of Egypt's fat, foolish King Farouk
instructed Fawzi Bey to vote against.)

  The seven votes were sufficient,although the Soviet Union
later claimed that its own absence from the council table made
the action illegal. Eleanor Roosevelt had the answer to that.
In London she said: "All this talk of [Russia's] about the
Security Council derision not being legal because she's not
there, well, whose fault is it that she's not?" By week's end,
40 nations were in line and offers of armed aid for Korea had
poured in from every corner of the earth.

  The U.S. went into Korea with the official backing of the U.N.


  [The North Koreans charged down the peninsula as South Korean
and U.S. troops fell back and back. Then as troops sand
supplies poured into the beachhead at Pusan, the retreating
stopped.]

(August 28, 1950)

  For weeks the U.S. command in Korea has faced a crucial
choice between two plans of battle. One was to withdraw to the
shortest possible defense perimeter immediately surrounding
Pusan and build up within it for a counterthrust. A shorter
perimeter could have been more easily held by fewer troops,
giving battle-weary G.I.s chance to rest up in the rear.

  The other bolder plan called for holding the widest possible
perimeter, including Taegu and Pohang. This would mean stringing
out in a thin line and shuttling units back & forth to block
enemy thrusts; but for political, morale and strategic reasons
it seemed to the top command important to hold Taegu, the
provisional capital of the South Korean government and an
important base for U.S. tactical aircraft. The hold-Taegu
strategy, obviously ordered by General Douglas MacArthur and
General Walton Walker, prevailed. By last week there were
heartening signs that that strategy was correct.

  The Communist enemy was showing signs of attrition. Time &
again he he failed to take advantage of situations where the
U.S. forces were exposed to serious damage and possible
breakthrough. For example, while his Changnyong bridgehead was
being cut to shreds, the North Koreans in a smaller bridgehead
to the north did nothing to help.

  The Reds had suffered desperately from U.S. airpower. Almost
since the beginning of the war the enemy had had to move men
and supplies by night; by day his supply lines and battle areas
had been bombed and strafed, while his factories and storehouses
in the rear were being pounded by strategic bombers.

  Where once the invaders used 20 or more tanks to spearhead
major assaults, he now used three or four. When he was presented
with juicy targets, his artillery was often silent, presumably
for lack of shells. Many North Korean prisoners complained of
short rations.

  The U.S. beachhead perimeter was taking on the likeness of a
tough elastic barrier which yielded locally under pressure but
quickly snapped back to upset the invaders.Said the commander:
"If we had four new division this afternoon we could sweep
straight through the enemy."

  The time for a general Allied counteroffensive was still far
off. According to U.S. intelligence the North Koreans now had
15 divisions in the line, five more than they reportedly had two
weeks ago, indicating that the Reds had committed the bulk of
their reserves. This week the enemy was again massing troops in
the south between Chinju and Masan, but by all possible human
calculations, the U.N. beachhead was assured. It was the best
week for the U.N. forces since the war began--and perhaps the
war's turning point.


  [In September, U.N. forces broke out of the beachhead and
counterattacked. The flanking landings at Inchon, strategic
masterstroke of General Douglas MacArthur, succeeded
brilliantly. Soon the enemy was fleeing northward, with U.N.
troops in hot pursuit.]

(September 25, 1950)

 Massive U.N. air strikes softened Inchon's beaches and all
land approaches to the port. As Admiral James H. Doyle's task
force approached, six destroyers gamely plowed ahead, drew and
silenced the fire of hidden enemy batteries on Wolmi Island.
Several ships were damaged, one severely. Then the U.S. 1st
Marine Division hit the beaches.

  The enemy's beachhead resistance was negligible. Within the
first four days of their assault, the marines stormed Wolmi,
swept through Inchon and seized Seoul's Kimpo airfield.
Advancing rapidly, they entered the capital's suburbs, prepared
to cross the Han River and get astride the communications to the
south and the rear of the enemy's army around the Pusan
perimeter. This week the enemy rallied; on the edge of their
advance the marines came up against stiffer resistance.

  In the U.N. beachhead around Pusan, General Walton Walker's
eighth Army (four U.S. divisions and a British brigade) went
over to a general offensive. The aim was to break the enemy ring
and link up with the U.N. forces fighting their way east from
Inchon. Initial advances along the 120-mile perimeter were
spotty. Nevertheless, at week's end Walker's men had
established bridgeheads on the west bank of the Naktong.

  But there appeared so far no clinching sign that the enemy
was in general retreat or that his morale had cracked. He still
counter-attacked, resisted fiercely, took back several nameless
ridges. He had plenty of ammo. For days his own radio kept mum
about the Inchon landing. U.N. planes dropped 3,000,000
leaflets, breaking the news and calling on him to surrender or
die. At week's end his choice was still death, not surrender.


(October 2, 1950)

  This week Douglas MacArthur announced that Seoul had fallen.
The city was a prize of primary military, political,
psychological and economic importance. It was the climax of a
brilliant week for the United Nations in Korea.

  MacArthur had predicted that the Reds would find it
impossible to try to contain both the Inchon-Seoul invasion
beachhead and the Eighth Army's southeastern perimeter. They
would have to take their choice. Last week they took it. They
fought like tigers for Seoul and melted away in the south. Early
this week, Eighth Army spearheads racing west and north from the
old perimeter were only 25 miles from a link-up with the
southern arm of the Seoul enclave.


(October 9, 1950)

  The enemy's collapse came with avalanche swiftness.

  On Tuesday his resistance still seemed determined. The high
command in Tokyo announced the capture of Seoul, but within the
battered capital fierce street battles raged. Along the
southern perimeter, the North Korean withdrawal from the Naktong
went stubbornly.

  On Wednesday the avalanche began to roll. Late the night
before a motorized column of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division,
barreling up from the south, had joined hands with the X Corps
pushing down from the Inchon beachhead. "Complete breakthrough,"
reported Tokyo. On Thursday the enemy's main force abandoned
Seoul, his trapped divisions in the southwest fell apart. On
Friday, U.N. communiques called it a "rout." By week's end, the
avalanche had run its thunderous course. North Korean organized
resistance had ended. U.N. forces were mopping up isolated
remnants, the first U.N. division had crossed the 38th parallel.


 [Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, fell to the U.N. as
troops raced north toward the Chinese border. Talk of postwar
reconstruction was already beginning. Then in late November
came disaster.]

(December 11, 1950)

  The U.S. and its allies stood at the abyss of disaster. The
Chinese Communists, pouring across the Manchurian border in
vast formations, had smashed the U.N. army, this week were
clawing forward to pursue and destroy its still-organized
fragments. Caught in the desperate retreat were 140,000 American
troops, the flower of the U.S. Army--almost the whole effective
Army the U.S. had. With them, fighting to establish a defensive
position, were 20,000 British, Turkish and other allies, some
100,000 South Korean soldiers.

  It was defeat--the worst defeat the U.S. had ever suffered.
Even though the U.N. forces might still have the luck, skill and
power to slow the Communist drive and withdraw in good order
from the devastated peninsula, it was defeat that could not be
redressed in Korea. If this defeat were allowed to stand, it
would mean the loss of Asia to Communism. If it were allowed to
stand, no Asian could evermore put any stock in the promise that
had given him hope against Communism--the promise that the U.S.
and its allies would come to his help. And no European would be
able to believe with any to believe with any firmness that the
U.S. was the bulwark against Communism that it professed to be
before the disaster in Korea.


(December 11, 1950)

 Last week the conservative military textbooks, the old ways of
wart, caught up with the U.S. and with a daring champion of new
ways of war, Douglas MacArthur. He had beaten the textbooks
again & again; last week they beat him.

  In North Korea, he tried what he called a "massive
compression envelopment" against greatly superior forces. He
undoubtedly underestimated the size and the quality of the
Chinese troops. Their lack of tanks, artillery and transport
looked like fatal weakness to exponents of current U.S. military
doctrines. Specifically, MacArthur overestimated the effect of
his air power on the Chinese troops.

  The enveloped Chinese broke through the envelopment. Their
thrust was so wide, deep and strong that his inadequate reserves
(grouped around the 1st Cavalry Division) could not check it.
MacArthur's center was gone and the Reds lapped around the two
inside flanks of his divided army, pushing both wings back
toward the sea.


(December 18, 1950)

  "Retreat, hell!" snapped Major General Oliver Prince Smith,
commander of the 1st Marine Division, with which he had fought
on Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu, Okinawa. "We're not
retreating, we're just advancing in a different direction."

  Assembled in Hagaru, south of the frozen, blood-stained
beaches of the Changjin Reservoir, the 1st Marine Division and
the 7th had already suffered heavy casualties in battles with
the encircling Communists. They had heard the screams of their
comrades when the Reds lobbed phosphorous grenades into
truckloads of U.S. wounded. When the order came to start south,
the enemy was already closing in on Hagaru's makeshift airstrip,
whence thousands of wounded and frostbite victims had been flown
out. The last plane waited an extra hour for one desperately
wounded man.

  The marines abandoned none of their disabled men, but
bulldozers pushed the dead into mass graves by hundreds.

  The fight to Koto, six miles down the road, was the worst.
The crawling vehicles ran into murderous mortar, machine-gun and
small- arms fire from Communists in log and sandbag bunkers. The
U.S. answering fire and air attacks killed thousands of the
enemy and held the road open. When the lead vehicles reached
Koto the rearguard was still fighting near Hagaru to keep the
enemy from chewing up the column from behind.


  [The U.N. forces retreated beyond the 38th parallel, prepared
to fall back even further under the Chinese onslaught. Seoul
was retaken by the Communists.]

(January 15, 1951)

  The suicidal fury of the Reds' first attack north of Seoul
was astounding. The vast mass of the enemy pressed on by day as
well as by night, ignoring U.S. artillery zeroed in on their
lines of advance,ignoring the swarm of planes that hammered them
from the air.

  Having forced their way across the frozen Imjin River, the
Chinese ran into minefields and barbed wire. The leading
elements marched right through the minefields, most of them
blowing themselves up, and those who followed advanced over
their own dead. When they reached the barbed wire, hundreds of
Chinese flung straw mats down on the wire, then threw themselves
down on the mats, and the others trod the living bridge over the
wire.

  From the north, northwest and northeast, The Chinese
converged on Seoul. The U.S. 24th Division, holding the center
road leading to the city, slowed up the enemy by
counterattacking with 20 Pershing tanks, and briefly recaptured
Uijongbu. But this was only a delaying action; Seoul was doomed.
President Syngman Rhee and his cabinet fled to Pusan. Allied
evacuation of the capital was carried out efficiently and
without undue haste. "After all," said a U.S. officer bitterly,
"we've had a lot or practice."


  [The retreat finally slowed, the disposition of forces
stabilized on both sides, and there began two years of bloody
stalemate: ground was gained, then lost, towns and villages
changed hands over and over, and casualties, both military and
civilian, kept mounting.]

(April 9, 1951)

  The U.N. secretariat reported last week that U.N. forces in
Korea had suffered total casualties of 228, 941.Dead 25, 374.
Wounded 128,394. Missing 75,173.

  Casualties by nations:

South Korean             168,652 U.S.
57,120 Turkey                     1,169 United Kingdom
       892 France                       396 Australia
           265 The Netherlands              112 Siam
               108 Greece                        89 Canada
                    68 The Philippines               55 New
Zealand                    9 Union of South Africa          6
Belgium, Luxembourg            0


  [In the Philippines, meanwhile, a different kind of rebellion
was being dealt with in a different way.]

(March 19, 1951)

 Since he took office last September, 41-year-old Secretary of
Defense Ramon Magsaysay has realized that pacifying Luzon's
15,000 Communist Huk rebels is more than a military problem. The
Huk rank & file--and most Huk sympathizers--are poor, landless
peasants, led into rebellion by Communist promises to Utopia.
Magsaysay has come to believe that a little government help and
a few acres of land would transform Huk guerrillas into peaceful
citizens.

  Last month he announced a plan for doing this. With 4,000,000
pesos of government aid, Magsaysay started a land resettlement
project in the fertile but undeveloped plains of Mindanao.
Instead of jail sentences, each Huk who is captured or gives up
will get ten hectares (25 acres) of this land, plus a house,
tools and work animals. "Here is a good way to give those boys
in the mountains something to come down for."

  Civilian Filipinos were enthusiastic about the idea. So were
many Huks. In the last six weeks, since word of Magsaysay's plan
spread into Luzon's hills, 500 Huks have surrendered and applied
for resettlement. Three hundred hectares of that virgin land in
Mindanao have been cleared for the first batch of Huk settlers,
who will leave Luzon within the next few months. More are
expected. "We keep hammering at them," said Magsaysay, "and
looking for them in the jungles, and promising them this green
valley where they can have their own homes and live happily with
hot coffee and ice cream every day."


  [When the Korean fighting had been going on for a year, the
Communist leaders indicated a willingness to open armistice
talks.]

(July 9, 1951)

  Within three hours, U.N. Commander Matthew Ridgway was
carrying out his instructions. Nearly 100 radio stations beamed
his words, in English, Korean and Chinese, to "the Commander in
Chief, Communist Forces in Korea." "...I am informed," said the
message, "that you may wish a meeting to discuss an armistice
providing for the cessation of hostilities and all acts of armed
force in Korea, with adequate guarantees for the maintenance of
such an armistice. Upon the receipt of work from you that such
a meeting is desired I shall be prepared to name my
representative..."

  Then came the waiting. Along the battle lines, fighting
slackened.

  The world did not have to wait long before Radio Peking
crackled to life again. It was 11 o'clock Sunday night in Tokyo,
9 Sunday morning in Washington--just 39 hours after Ridgway's
invitation.

  "General Ridgway, commander in chief of United Nations
forces: We agree to meet your representative for conducting
talks concerning cessation of military action and establishment
of peace. We propose that the place of meeting be in the area
of Kaesong on the 38th parallel. If you agree, our
representatives are prepared to meet your representative between
July 10 and 15, 1951."


(September 17, 1951)

  After two contentious, fruitless months on history's stage,
the ancient, battle-scarred city of Kaesong last week seemed
ready to be moved into the wings. There was still a chance that
the cease- fire talks, broken off by the Reds, might be picked
up again--but in all probability not at Kaesong.

  The stream of Communist invective and charges of U.N. truce
violations continued last week without letup. The Peking radio
frankly admitted what the free world has suspected for
weeks--that the breakdown at Kaesong was closely linked to the
signing of the Japanese treaty. The Reds had obviously hoped to
use Korea as an instrument of blackmail at San Francisco.


  [The talks resumed in October at Panmunjom. As months passed
and proposals and counterproposals were made and dismissed, the
main sticking point came to be the U.N.'s refusal to repatriate
forcibly some 100,000 captured Chinese and North Korean soldiers
who did not want to return to their Communist homelands.
Finally, in April 1953, Communist negotiators turned
conciliatory.]

(June 15, 1953)

 In the boxlike wood-and-matting conference house at Panmunjom,
Lieut. General William K. Harrison and General Nam II signed
the "terms of reference" for an agreement on the exchange of
prisoners of war. The Communists gave in on voluntary
repatriation, the single issue that for 17 months had stood in
the way of an armistice. Here is how the P.W. plan will work:

  1) Five neutral nations, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland,
Czechoslovakia and India, will take custody, in Korea, of the
46,380 North Korean and Chinese prisoners who say they do not
want to return to their homes. Only Indian troops, armed with
side arms, will stand guard.

  2) For 90 days, not more than seven Communist representatives
for each 1,000 prisoners will "explain to all the prisoners of
war...their right and...inform them of any matters relating to
their return to their homelands, particularly of their full
freedom to return home to lead a peaceful life."

  3) Any prisoner who decides to return home may apply to the
neutral commission for repatriation. But before he goes, a
majority vote of the commission must approve his application.
Possible grounds for disapproval: the belief that the prisoner
has been coerced into changing his status.

  4) After 90 days, the political "peace conference" which will
follow the armistice "shall endeavor to settle" the question of
the P.W.s who have not applied for repatriation.

  5) The crux of the matter. If the conference fails to settle
the question in 30 days, "any prisoners of war who have not
exercised their right to be repatriated...shall be changed from
the P.W. status to civilian status by declaration of the neutral
nations repatriation commission."


  [In July, the long-awaited armistice agreements were signed.
The war ended only a few thousand yards from where it had begun.
The U.N. principle of repelling aggression had been upheld, but
the cost in casualties (some 74,000 U.N soldiers killed,
including 36,600 Americans, 1 1/2 million Communist military
casualties and some 2,000,000 civilians on both sides killed and
wounded) was staggering.]

(August 3, 1953)

  Promptly at 10, the two chief actors entered. Lieut. General
William K. Harrison, the U.N. senior delegate, tieless and
without decorations, sat down at a table, methodically began to
sign for the U.N. with his own ten-year-old fountain pen. North
Korea's starchy little Nam II, sweating profusely in his heavy
tunic, his chest displaying a row of gold medals the size of
tangerines, took his seat at the other table, signing for the
enemy. Each man signed 18 copies of the main truce documents
(six each in English, Korean, Chinese), which aides carried back
& forth. The rumble of artillery still rolled through the
building. Flashbulbs blazed and cameras whirred as the two chief
delegates silently wrote. When they had finished, West Pointer
Harrison and Nam II, schoolteacher in uniform, rose and departed
without a word to each other, or even a nod or a handshake.

  Outside, a correspondent asked a British officer whether the
Commonwealth Division would celebrate with the traditional
fireworks. "No," said the Briton, "there is nothing to
celebrate. Both sides have lost."

  Syngman Rhee, Korea's veteran fighter for fredom, sat on a
stone bench in his garden at Seoul. He still spoke against the
truce, but his talk now was dull and resigned. There had been
some fear that his ROK troops might refuse to withdraw from the
buffer zone--but they ceased fire along with their U.N. comrades
in arms. Syngman Rhee, whose opposition might have wrecked the
truce if the Communist hunger for a truce had not been
voracious, now declared: "My desire is strong not to follow
unilateral policy if it can be avoided."

  Up to the last, irritations and uncertainties had persisted.
General Mark Clark, who flew from Tokyo to Seoul in his
Constellation, had expected to sign the truce at Panmunjom, with
Kim II Sung and Peng Tehhuai (the North Korean and Chinese
commanders) as the other signatories. But for this, the Reds
made unacceptable conditions: no South Koreans or reporters
could be present.

  So Clark signed alone in a tin-roofed movie hall at Munsan,
the allied truce base, three hours after the Panmunjom signing,
and Kim and Peng presumably signed in their own lair at
Pyongyang.


  [Prisoner exchanges began. But under the terms of the
armistice, prisoners refusing repatriation had to be interviewed
by a neutral commission that would explain their right to
choose. The prisoners violently resisted the explanations.]

(August 17, 1953)

  At 8:56 one cool, grey morning last week, a drab Molotov
truck pulled up with a growl in front of the triple-arched
"Freedom Gate" at Panmunjom. Pale hands and paler faces appeared
from behind the grey canvas that covered the van. One by one,
U.S., Turkish and South Korean soldiers leaped from the tailgate
or climbed down a blue ladder to freedom. Some grinned, some
wept, some stared. A major shouted his name to correspondents.
"Operation Big Switch" had begun.

  Every day last week, approximately 400 U.N. prisoners arrived
at Panmunjom and by helicopter, truck and ambulance, were sped
back to Freedom Village near Munson. Some of the survivors of
Communist prison camps were healthy, robust men, who grinned,
waved and danced on the gravel path to the receiving tents. Some
could not dance, because they were emaciated or had only one
leg. Others were litter cases, undernourished or sick with
tuberculosis or dysentery.


(October 12, 1953)

  For two labyrinthine years, the U.N. held out at Panmunjom for
the right of prisoners of war to refuse to go back behind the
Iron Curtain. That question finally became the central issue of
the truce talks. The truce agreement concede the U.N. view: it
specifically ruled that no P.W. should be forced to return home.

  To get this agreement, however, the U.N. did agree that P.W.s
should spend 90 days in neutral custody while representatives
of their governments "explained" their positions. Furthermore,
the U.N. omitted to negotiate the details of this procedure.
That was left to the Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission
comprising Red Poland and Czechoslovakia, neutral Sweden and
Switzerland, and India, the chairman. Last week the U.N. was
shocked to learn that its sin of omission might imperil the
basic principle of nonrepatriation for which, in effect, the
closing months of the war had been fought.

  First, the Neutral Commission sent a letter to the 14,800
Chinese and the 7,800 North Korean prisoners at Indian Village
in Korea's demilitarized zone. "We have come here," the
commission said, "to protect you from any form of coercion...to
assure you of your freedom to exercise your right to be
repatriated." The P.W.s must listen "absolutely by necessity"
to the explainers, "who would inform you of your peaceful life
and complete freedom upon your returning home."

  This letter indicated that the commission and its Indian
chairman, Lieut. General K.S. Thimayya, had accepted the
Communist argument that "certain interested parties," and not
the love of freedom, were keeping the prisoners on this side of
the Iron Curtain. At once, the U.N. protested that the letter's
"wording, method of presentation and the strong implications
have been slanted towards unduly influencing prisoners of
war...to repatriation rather than making a free, independent
choice."

  Two days later the commission issued the long-awaited ground
rules for the 90-day explanations. After one quick look at
them, one U.N. officer gasped: "They've bought just about
everything the Communists wanted." The commission ruled that
each P.W. must undergo individual explanation, eight hours a
day, six days a week, before an audience "not exceeding 35"
officials of his own and neutral countries. Again the U.N.
protested.

  At week's end Commission Chairman Thimayya who casts the
commission's deciding vote rejected the U.N. protests against
the commission's ground rules for the explanation period; he
also requested that the 90 days be extended beyond the accepted
24th of December. The U.N. refused; the jittery P.W.s, already
feeling abandoned by their friends, might well decide, "Ten days
could stretch into ten years. Let's throw in the towel." Said
outgoing U.N. Supreme Commander General Mark Clark: "We cannot
be a party to breaking faith."

  But until Dec. 24 it would be the commission and Thimayya,
not the U.N. and Clark, that would decide whether the
Communists explain or coerce, thanks to that error of omission
at Panmunjom.


(January 4, 1954)

  On the same weird, wild note with which they had begun ten
weeks ago, the P.W. explanations in the Korean neutral zone
ended last week. On that last day, U.N. explainers broadcast a
final appeal to the 22 Americans, one Briton and 77 pro-Red
South Koreans who refused to go home and refused to be
interviewed. The broadcast words were wasted breath. The
prisoners refused to listen, linked arms for a Korean fold
dance, banged cymbals, tried to drown out the loudspeakers with
Communist songs. When the broadcast appeal was over, the U.N.
explainers waited around for half an hour, then abandoned the
prisoners to the consequences of their choice.

  The handful of Americans had got disproportionate amount of
headline space of late, almost enough to lend a spurious
evenhandedness to the failure of "explaining" by either side.
The facts were quite the contrary. On the U.N. side are more
than 22,000 Chinese and North Korean prisoners who have
renounced Communism. The communists pleaded with 3,173 of them
in explaining sessions, and persuaded only 138 -- or less than
1% -- to return to their Communist homelands.

  Final defections: 22,000 Communists; 22 Americans.


(February 1, 1954)

  At 8:45 one morning last week, a U.S. marine captain stared
down the frozen clay road to Panmunjom. He could make out a
distant blaze of standards, the glint of their points in the
winter sun, "Here they come," the captain's squad muttered, as
the tramp of marching feet grew loud. "All right," the captain
said. "Everybody get back and keep this road clear. These guys
have been waiting a long time for this..."

  The Chinese prisoners came in columns of five, and proudly
out of the neutral zone. The first two men flourished pictures
of Chiang Kai-shek and of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of China's
republic. The tight-drawn ranks bore red, a white and blue
Nationalist banners, the Stars and Stripes, the pale blue and
white of the U.N. Some P.W.s wielded crude, homemade flagstaffs,
their jagged points torn from beer cans. A few kept their prison
camp basketballs. One clasped a French horn. "Dear
anti-Communist comrades," boomed a loudspeaker as the P.W.s
neared the edge of freedom, "we have come here to welcome you."
The P.W.s called back, "Hsieh, hsieh (Thanks, thanks)," and
their voices swelled into the U.N. zone. The loudspeaker told
them: "Please come quietly, and be free."

  All day in the sunshine, and late into the night, 14,209
Chinese anti-Communists poured across the line. They broke ranks
to embrace the welcomers. They passed out mimeographed pamphlets
thanking "Dear U.N. honorable fighters" for not letting them go
back to Communism.

  The U.N. liberation schedule ran smoothly, with no hint of
interference from the Communists. But on the second morning, a
small small boat laden with 50 U.S. marines slammed into an LST
and sank. Twenty-eight marines were drowned, or died from
exposure.

  These U.S. marines, who were due to help convoy the Chinese
P.W.s safely to Formosa, were perhaps the last of some 7,000
U.N. soldiers who died for the P.W.s' freedom. Of some 30,000
U.N. soldiers killed in Korea these 7,000 were killed after the
U.N. decided to hold out as an essential condition for peace,
for the right of the P.W.s not to go back to Communism. At
week's end U.N. Commanding General John Hull gave this sacrifice
due measure. The newly liberated P.W.s said Hull, are "living
symbols" that man everywhere can escape from Communism, rely
upon U.N. support, and find "sanctuary in the free world."